The following remarks are drawn up by one but little accustomed to writing, and offered with much diffidence. In them the Spanish character will be found perhaps severely treated; but it is necessary to remark, that not only these observations are, from their very nature, general; but farther, that they have no reference to the genuine or European Spanish character—a character of which the writer has but little knowledge, and one as essentially different from that which falls under consideration in the following pages, as the society of all convict colonies is from that of the mother country.[1]
PART I
THE PHILLIPPINES
Of the numerous groupes of islands which constitute the maritime division of Asia, the Phillippines, in situation, riches, fertility, and salubrity, are equal or superior to any. Nature has here revelled in all that poets or painters have thought or dreamt of unbounded luxuriance of Asiatic scenery. The lofty chains of mountains—the rich and extensive slopes which form their bases—the ever-varying change of forest and savannah—of rivers and lakes—the yet blazing volcanoes in the midst of forests, coeval perhaps with their first eruption—all stamp her work with the mighty emblems of her creative and destroying powers. Java alone can compete with them in fertility; but in riches, extent, situation, and political importance, it is far inferior.
Their position, whether in a political or commercial point of view, is strikingly advantageous. With India and the Malay Archipelago on the west and south, the islands of the fertile Pacific and the rising empires of the new world on the east, the vast market of China at their doors, their insular position and numerous rivers affording a facility of communication and defence to every part of them, an active and industrious population, climates of almost all varieties, a soil so fertile in vegetable and mineral productions as almost to exceed credibility; the Phillippine Islands alone, in the hands of an industrious and commercial nation, and with a free and enlightened government, would have become a mighty empire:—they are—a waste!
This archipelago presents, in common with all the islands which form the southern and eastern barrier of Asia, those striking features which mark a recent or an approaching convulsion of nature: they are separated by narrow, but deep, and frequently unfathomable channels; their steep and often tremendous capes and headlands, though clothed with verdure to the very brink, appear to rise almost perpendicularly from the ocean; they have but few reefs or shoals, and those of small extent; and in the interior of the islands, numerous volcanoes, in activity or very recently so, boiling springs and mineral waters of all descriptions, minerals of all kinds on the very surface of the earth, and frequent shocks of earthquakes, all point to this conclusion, and offer a rich and unexplored field to the geologist[2] and mineralogist, as do their plants and animals to the botanist and zoologist;[3] the few attempts that have hitherto been made to examine them, having from various causes failed, or only extended to a short distance round the capital.[4]
The climate of these islands is remarkably temperate and salubrious. The thermometer in Manila is sometimes as low as 70°, and rarely exceeds 90° in the house during the N. E. monsoon. In the interior it is sometimes as low as 68° in the mornings, which are remarkably cool, so much so as to require at time$ woolen clothing. None of the mountains are within the limits of perpetual congelation; but I think some cannot be far from it, as I have seen something much resembling snow on the Pico de Mindoro, and there may be higher ones in the interior of Magindanao.[6]
Both natives and Spaniards live to a tolerable age, in spite of the indolent habits of the latter, and the debauches of both. The Spaniards are most commonly carried off by chronic dysentery, which is called by them “la enfermedád del pays” (the illness of the country): from its very frequent occurrence, at least 7 out of 10 of those who exceed the age of 40, fall victims to this disorder.[7] Acute liver complaints are very rare, as is also the chronic affection of that organ, unless as connected with the preceding disorder.
Fevers are not common amongst Europeans, in Manila. Amongst the natives, the intermittent is of common occurrence, particularly after the rains (in September and October), and in woody or marshy situations.[8] This appears to be owing as much to the thinness and want of clothing, together with their habits of bathing indiscriminately at all hours, as to miasmata; and, as their fevers are generally neglected, they often superinduce other and more fatal disorders, as obstructions, &c. Tetanos in cases of wounds is of common occurrence, and generally fatal.